This study examined the feasibility of teaching phonemic manipulation skills (auditory rhyming, blending, or segmenting) to preschool children with disabilities. Forty-seven children, 4-6 years old, enrolled in a special education preschool, were randomly assigned to receive training in one of three categories of phonemic manipulation tasks (rhyming, blending, and segmenting) or a control condition. Results indicated that children were able to make significant progress in each category of training, but that they demonstrated little or no generalization either within a category of phonemic tasks (e.g., from one type of blending task to another type of blending task) or between categories of phonemic tasks (e.g., from blending to segmenting). However, children who received segmenting training improved in blending continuous sounds. Although the children's level of cognitive development did significantly predict some learning outcomes, it did not appear to limit the learning of phonemic tasks in important ways. Discussion focuses on the nature of phonemic awareness, teaching conditions that might be required to facilitate generalization, and the possibility of preventing or reducing subsequent reading problems through early intervention in this area. (Contains 20 references.) (JDD)